Tujia.com eyes 100,000 Japan properties
TOKYO: Tujia.com, China’s largest vacation rental platform, is seeking to boost Japan listings by 10 times in two years as it vies with Airbnb Inc to capitalise on the nation’s tourism boom.
The Beijing-based startup aimed to increase the number of properties available for holiday rental to about 100,000 by 2019 from 10,000 now, said Tomoko Suzuki, chief executive officer of the Japanese unit.
Japan’s home-sharing market was rapidly expanding after the government cleared regulatory hurdles earlier this year and as record tourist arrivals put a strain on the hotel industry.
Chinese are bucking tighter capital controls at home to invest in real estate around the world, and Suzuki said Japan’s relatively low land prices would give them an incentive to purchase properties that Tujia could add to its listings.
Some investors owned as many as 100 rooms, sometimes whole apartment buildings, and they leased to local tenants as well as tourists through the Tujia platform, she said.
Visitors to Japan rose 18 per cent to 18.9 million in the first eight months of the year, on course to beat record 24 million last year, Japan National Tourism Organisation data showed.
The country hosted more than 800,000 Chinese in August alone — the most ever for a single month.
Tujia charged owners three per cent of their accommodation rates, which were about 15,000 yen (RM563) to 20,000 yen a night, said Suzuki. Bloomberg